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Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Half Time Top 10: 2015

It’s
actually been quite a good year for movies in 2015 so far – although not
surprisingly, it’s been indie, foreign or documentaries that have been the best
of the year so far. I still have quite a bit of catching up to do – as I always
do at this time. Among the films I really want to see, and either missed
haven’t opened yet in Canada, are: Timbuktu,
Jauja, The Tribe, Heaven Knows What, About Elly, Hard to Be a God, Kumiko the
Treasure Hunter, Girlhood, La Sapienza, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Saint Laurent,
Eden, Buzzard, White God, Amour fou, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Ansalem,
Gueros, Dope, Ned Rifle, Appropriate Behavior, Sunshine Superman, Tales of the
Grim Sleeper, When Marnie Was There. And even this list is only cursory and
incomplete. Still, thought, this has been a fine year – with lots of good
movies to see if you’ve been paying attention.

A few of the films that could have made the list,
but didn’t include: Approaching the
Elephant (Amanda Wilder) is a truly fascinating documentary about an
“alternative” school that allows students a voice in every decision made – and
the problem that can happen when one of those students takes advantage of that
situation, and threatens to ruin it for everyone else. Eden (Mia Hansen-Love) is an
excellent film about a man drifting through his life, not quite realizing he’s
wasting it. Gangs of Wasseypur (Anurag Kashyap) is a two part, more than
five hour Indian gangster epic – a visceral, violent, enthralling movie, and
one of the best kept secrets of the year so far. Paddington (Paul King) which was an absolute delight from start to finish – my three year old
loved it – I think I loved it more. Red Army
(Gabe Polsky) is the rarest of things – a wonderful hockey movie – and
it’s also a fascinating documentary about the USSR in its waning days. ’71 (Yann Demange) is an expertly paced thriller, that is also politically smart. What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement & Taiki Waititi) was an absolutely
hilarious mockumentary about four vampires sharing a flat in New Zealand. While We’re Young (Noah Baumbach) veers
off course in the final act, but overall is a funny, perceptive view of the
generational divide. Wild Tales (Damián Szifrón) is a deliriously
entertaining Argentinian film – a set of short stories, all of which revolve
around violence and death, which basically concludes that all people,
everywhere, are horrible.

10. Phoenix (Christian Petzold)Christian
Petzold’s Phoenix is a very good movie, with an absolute stunner of an ending
that raises the level of the whole movie. This German film is a take on
Hitchcock’s Vertigo – with Nina Hoss delivering an excellent performance as a
Jewish released from the camps in the days after WWII, and returning to Berlin.
She wants to find her husband – despite the fact that he may well have been the
one who turned her in. She has been scarred – literally – by the camps, and her
husband doesn’t recognize her – but thinks she looks enough like his wife, who
he says is dead, to fool some people – so he can get her money. She goes along
with the ruse, hoping to eventually reveal the truth, and be welcomed back. The
whole movie is handled with subtlety and intelligence – a slow burning tension
that bubbles under the surface. Then, the final scene in the film happens, and
your jaw hits the floor. No, one scene does not a masterpiece make – but it
certainly raised my appreciation of what was already a very good film.

9. Love & Mercy (Bill Pohlad)

The
biopic of the genius musician has become a tired clichéd – only occasionally
resulting in a movie actually worthy of its subject. Bill Pohlad’s Love &
Mercy, about Brian Wilson, is one of those films. The film shuttles back and
forth between the 1960s – when Wilson stepped away from life on the road with
the Beach Boys, to write and record his masterpiece Pet Sounds, and his mental
issues start getting worse, and in the 1980s, when he is controlled by a
doctor, until a new woman enters his life. John Cusack is excellent as the
older Wilson – it takes a scene or two to get used to him in a very un-Cusack
like role (not to mention, he looks nothing like Wilson, or the younger version
of him in the film) – and Elizabeth Banks may be even better in this segment.
But it’s Paul Dano, as the younger Wilson, who delivers what is probably the
male performance of the year so far. His Wilson is a genius, of course, but an
insecure one – one constantly teetering on the brink of a mental abyss he may
not be able to come back from. Director Bill Pohlad – making his first film as
a director in more than 20 years (he has produced some great ones though – 12
Years a Slave, The Tree of Life, Into the Wild, A Prairie Home Companion,
Brokeback Mountain) brings a sensitivity to the direction, and the screenplay
(co-written by Owen Moverman, who co-wrote Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, about
Bob Dylan, and the best of the recent genius musician biopics), mainly avoids
the clichés that often drag the genre down. The film takes chances throughout –
and while they don’t always succeed, they do enough to make this a highlight of
the year so far.

8. The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland)

Director
Peter Strickland’s last film, Berberian Sound Studio, was an homage to the
giallo horror films from Italy – that directly referenced the films it was
playing around with, but also works on its own terms. It was not a masturbatory
regurgitation of well-known tropes, but rather something deeper. The same is
true of his follow-up – The Duke of Burgundy – whose opening looks precisely
like a soft-core, European porn movie from the 1970s, and plays with the genre
throughout in its story of a sadomasochistic lesbian relationship between two
women – the older one (Sidse Babett Knudsen), appears to be in control, but
really may not be, given how the younger woman (Ciara D’Anna) manipulates
everything. The film is brilliantly well made – both in terms of its visual,
and its meticulous sound design, genuinely erotic, and yet also deeper than the
films it sends up. The film really is about the compromises we make in
relationships, so no matter who you are, you may well find yourself genuinely
moved by this film.

7. It Follows (David Robert Mitchell)

David
Robert Mitchell’s It Follows joins the shortlist for the best horror films of
the decade so far – with its brilliant premise of a presence stalking a teenage
girl, who can only stop it by passing it on to someone – by having sex. The
film plays with the tropes of the horror genre – which has always been
moralistic about teenage sex – but goes further than just that, and has made a
film of genuine ideas about growing up, wrapped up in a genuinely creepy, scary
and disturbing horror film – and brilliantly constructed one at that, with its
long takes. The only flaw with the film is a confused and confusing climax in a
swimming pool – which really doesn’t work at all – but otherwise, this is top
notch horror filmmaking – and like the best the genre has to offer, one of
ideas as well as scares.

6. World of Tomorrow (Don Hertzfeldt)

I
usually do not put shorts on my lists like this – in part, because I don’t see
that many – but Don Hertzfeldt’s 17 minute, animated sci-fi film really is as
brilliant as any feature I have seen so far this year – and packed with more
ideas than almost all of them. The premise of the movie is that a young girl is
visited by one of her future clones, who walks her through the future – which
is a dark, horrifying place. The little girl has no idea of that though – she
cannot comprehend what she is being told – but we do. The film is simultaneously
hilarious, and disturbing –a genuinely moving exploration of what it means to
be human, and what we are giving away. The animation – with Hertzfeldt’s
trademarked stick figures, and a much more detailed background than he normally
has, is brilliant. I rented the film from Vimeo – where you get to keep it for
30 days – and I have no idea how many times I watched the film in that month,
but I still cannot wait to see it again. One of the great shorts I have ever
seen – and if it doesn’t win the Animated Short Oscar this year, I’m going to
be pissed.

5. Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (Brett
Morgen)

Kurt
Cobain: Montage of Heck is a documentary that is, admittedly, tailor made for
me – a Nirvana fan from my teens on. Yet over the years I have seen many docs
on Cobain, Nirvana and grunge, and none of them have been anywhere near as good
as this one. Part of the reason for that is that director Brett Morgan has
access to things no one has had before – home movies, audio recordings,
journals and interviews with Cobain’s family, who haven’t given on camera
interviews before. But a lot of it is the way Morgen himself assembles the
footage. Like his episode of the ESPN show 30 for 30 (which may be the best one
in a great series), where he assembled a montage of one very busy day in sports
history to make larger points about news, sports and celebrity – Morgen does
something similar here – making the film one big, haunting, heartbreaking montage.
Yes, the movie runs out of steam a little towards the end – when we’re in more
conventional territory – but not much. This is easily the best doc of the year
so far.

4. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)

We’ve
already had more than our share of action blockbusters this year – and to be
fair to them, most have been at least moderately entertaining. But they all
pale in comparison to Mad Max: Fury Road, which is the best, most bat-shit
insane action movie to come along in quite some time. The film is almost all
action from beginning to end – and yet, it finds time for a complex narrative,
and character arcs that are told almost all through actions, both large and
small. For a movie called Mad Max, you wouldn’t expect the best, most complicated
character to be Charlize Theron’s Furiosa – but that you have it, it happened.
The original Mad Max trilogy really only had one great film – the second one,
The Road Warrior – but that was an action masterpiece. This is another one –
and makes me really sad that director George Miller essentially abandoned the
genre for 30 years. But he’s back now – and this movie is blockbuster
filmmaking at its finest.

3. Ex Machina (Alex Garland)

Alex
Garland’s directorial debut Ex Machina is one of the best, smartest science
fiction films in recent years. It is a small film – four characters, one
location – a large house in the middle of nowhere – with great special effects,
that are used sparingly, but with greatest results. The film is about a young
programmer (Domnhall Gleeson) who is called by his eccentric, billionaire,
genius boss (Oscar Isaac) to his secluded house to give a Turing test to robot
he has created (Alicia Virkander). The film is tense, gradually ratcheting up
the suspense as it moves along. It is also brilliantly acted – especially by Isaac
and Virkander, the latter of which does a great job with a difficult role. The
film is more than a sci-fi thriller however – it is a smart take on gender
roles and misogyny. Like all great sci-fi, it is a film of ideas that enhance
the plot – that uses special effects to enhance the story and not detract from
it. Imagine that.

2. Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas)

Olivier
Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria reminded me of the Golden Age of European Art
House films in the best way imaginable. The film stars Juliette Binoche as an
aging actress, whose mentor has just died, and has now been offered a role in a
revival of the play that made her a star in the first place – but instead of
playing the young, ingénue, she’ll now be playing the older, more repressed
character – which wreaks havoc on her psyche. Binoche is brilliant – she always
is – but Kristen Stewart, as her assistant, who runs lines with her (playing
the younger woman, of course, who in the play is also the older woman’s
assistant) is perhaps even better. The film certainly calls to mind the work of
Ingmar Bergman – although Assayas’ film has a lighter tone, and more comedic
moments than much of Bergman’s work. It is also a film that touches on a lot of
different things – including Stewart getting a chance to defend blockbuster
filmmaking, which is not something you normally find in art house films. The
film is meticulously put together, wonderfully written and amazingly well
acted. Assayas has been a great director for a long time now – and this ranks
among his very best films.

1. Inside Out (Pete Docter)

After a
few down years for Pixar, they have returned with one of the very best films
they have ever made. The film is also without a doubt the most daring film they
have made – taking place entirely inside the head of an 11 year old girl, with
her emotions being the main characters – with the ultimate message being that
sometimes it’s okay to be sad – in fact, you need to be sad at times. This is a
complex idea for a children’s movie – and yet Pixar was able to pull it off
brilliantly, in a movie that works on one level for kids and another for
adults. Like all Pixar films, it trusts it audience to be able to handle more
mature material – material that challenges them, and can indeed make you sad.
I’m not ashamed to admit that the movie made me cry – a lot – and not just
because of Bing Bong (although, yes, Bing Bong destroyed me). All of this
probably makes Inside Out sound depressing or serious – and it isn’t. It’s
still a joyous and hilarious – as well as brilliantly animated. This has been a
strong year so far for movies – but even saying that, Inside Out is far and
away the best movie I have seen so far this year.

About Me

I am an accountant, living in Brantford, ON - and although I am married and have beautiful daughter, I still find time to watch a lot of movies. This blog is mostly reviews of new movies - with other musing thrown in as well.